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Updated: April 30, 2025
Taking his father's glass from the bracket on the wall in the sitting-room, the half-caste walked out of the house to a spot where he could obtain a clear view of the ship. For a minute or so he gazed steadily, then lowered the glass. "A man-o'-war, Em, right enough; but I don' think she's an American. I'll wait a bit until she gets closer." "No, no, Jim! What you run such risk for? You go, Jim."
No; I regret to be obliged to refuse you, monsieur, but there is no help for it." "At least," said I, "you will transfer me to a British man-o'-war, should we chance to fall in with one?" "And be myself captured, and lose my ship for my pains!" exclaimed Lemaitre. "Oh no, monsieur; we will give your ships a wide berth, if we fall in with them, and trust to our heels."
The same thought seemed to have occurred to the old commodore; for, as I said this, in pursuance of some order he must have given to that effect for nobody does a thing on board a man-o'-war without the previous command of his superior officer the boatswain hailed the little craft. "Boat ahoy!" he shouted, with his lungs of brass and voice of a bull. "Ahoy! Ahoy-oy!"
"Will you swear to me that you are honestly of opinion that yon brig is not a man-o'-war?" "Certainly not," answered I, with pretended annoyance at his pertinacity. "She may be, or she may not be; it is quite impossible to express a more decided opinion, under the circumstances, and I therefore must decline to do so." And I turned and walked away from him with an air of petulance.
About a fortnight later, being at the time off Cape Ortegal, cruising under short canvas, we sighted at daybreak a brig in the offing, to windward, steering south, under a press of sail. She was, at the moment of discovery, some eight miles distant, and from her general appearance, and especially from the cut of her canvas, we judged her to be French, and a man-o'-war.
I swept my bonnet to the boards of the floor with a gesture that would have done honour to the Court of France; but her Ladyship tossed her nose higher in the air, as if the man-o'-war had encountered a huge wave.
Carvel in fitting out the Ranger. And my grandfather gives a striking picture of the captain. At that time the privateers, with the larger inducements of profit they offered, were getting all the best seamen. John Paul had but to take two turns with a man across the dock, and he would sign papers. Captain Jones was the first to raise the new flag of the stars and stripes over a man-o'-war.
The master-at-arms of the Chatham man-o'-war, chancing once to pass that way, came in for exceedingly rough usage at their hands, and when next day a lieutenant from the same ship appeared upon the scene with a gang at his back and tried to press the ringleaders in that affair, they "swore by God he should not, and if he offered to lay hands on them, they would cut him down."
I felt a chill breath on my forehead, and saw a few feet of the steel stand out darker than the darkness, disappear it was then the dinghy shot away from it and emerge once more. "Hallo! what boat's that?" said the voice suspiciously. "Why, I do believe it's a real man-o'-war, after all," said Pyecroft, and kicked Laughton. "What's that for?" Laughton was no dramatist.
Thence round the corner, so to speak, to British Honduras, where we called in at Belize, whose trade is in mahogany and chicklee gum, combined with a deal of quiet smuggling done with the Central American States. Many man-o'-war birds and pelicans were in the harbour. From Belize to Porto Barrios, the eastern terminus of the Guatemala railway.
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